EDWARD GIBBON ESQ.
Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) was an English historian, essayist, and Member of Parliament, best known for his monumental work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Born on 8 May 1737 (27 April Old Style) in Putney, Surrey, he was the only one of seven children to survive infancy. Frail in health and largely self-educated through extensive reading, he briefly attended Magdalen College, Oxford, but converted to Roman Catholicism at age 16. His father, a Protestant country gentleman and former MP, promptly sent him to Lausanne, Switzerland, under a Calvinist tutor; there Gibbon reconverted to Protestantism, mastered French, and developed a lifelong scholarly independence.
After military service in the Hampshire militia and a Grand Tour of the Continent, he experienced a famous moment of inspiration in Rome on 15 October 1764 while musing amid the ruins of the Capitol: the idea of writing the history of Rome’s decline. He later settled in London, served as an MP (for Liskeard and later Lymington), and moved in literary circles. He never married. In later life he lived much of the time in Lausanne. He died in London on 16 January 1794 at age 56.
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon
Published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788 (first volume in 1776, final three in 1788), this is Gibbon’s masterpiece and one of the great works of Enlightenment historiography. It covers roughly 1,300–1,500 years of history, beginning with the high point of the Empire under the Antonines (late 1st–2nd centuries CE) and extending through the fall of the Western Empire, the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.
Gibbon’s narrative is celebrated for its elegant, ironic prose, wide use of primary sources, and broad scope. He portrayed the decline as the “natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness,” with prosperity itself sowing the seeds of decay. Key factors he emphasized include the loss of civic and military virtue, the corruption of the legions and government, internal discord, barbarian invasions, and—most controversially—the rise of Christianity, which he argued undermined traditional Roman values and martial spirit.
The work was an immediate commercial and critical success, though chapters on early Christianity drew sharp criticism for their skeptical tone. Gibbon's work, however, remains a landmark for its literary power, ambition, and influence on how later generations have thought about the fall of empires and the writing of history itself.
DVX Presents, Unabridged:
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
by Edward Gibbon Esq.
in it's Vital Rebirthed Glory
VOLUME V AND VI COMING SOON!
"The Romans were strong and noble, and in a more noble and stronger sense than have ever existed, or even been dreamed of on earth... Every relic of them, every inscription, ravishes the taste of him who has once had a taste for it."
— Nietzsche